AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
In ABT’s repertory, George Balanchine’s Symphonie Concertante and Ballet Imperial represent the extreme of classicism. Both works are about dancing–rich and varied movement is repeated in ever-changing combinations by different dancers arranged about the stage in shifting patterns. Balanchine often referred to music as “the floor we dance on,” insisting his dancers achieve a special musicality, a visible harmony between score and movement. Unfortunately, that harmony often goes awry. In Symphonie Concertante, the two principal ballerinas frequently dance in unison: but even when they move as one, as Christine Dunham and Cheryl Yeager did, comparison of the two is inevitable. Dunham is propelled by the music; she inhabits it, breathes it. And while Yeager is a beautiful dancer, she seems a beat behind, struggling to catch up to Dunham and the score.
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ABT’s Sleeping Beauty is both a classic and a classical delight: the choreography–Kenneth MacMillan’s reinterpretation of the original by Marius Petipa–is crisp, brilliant, and demanding, and calls for virtuosic dancing as well as convincing mime. ABT’s production offers both.
The first act tells the story of a poor, trusting child beguiled by a noble rake. It feels somewhat negligible, as if the story could have been better told some other way or in some other medium, a feeling the dancers seem to share in this surprisingly slow, lackluster performance. Neither the corps’ perfect timing and placement in the peasant dances nor Giselle’s mad scene can enliven this act. Surely this is the reason act two is often performed alone.
